Tecmar tape drives: OK so far

[Jonathan Bayer]

In article <1989Jan17.151821.26311 at ateng.ateng.com> chip at ateng.ateng.com (Chip Salzenberg) writes:
>I've got a Tecmar external tape drive working with Xenix/386 2.3.1.
>
>I can't keep it streaming!  I've tried afio with large block sizes and
>large -c values, and it's no help.  What can I do?

This seems to be a limitation of the OS.  We are using an Everex
external tape drive with the same problem.  It seems that the tape
driver has an internal buffer which it uses.  It fills up the buffer and
then writes it to the tape.  While filling up the buffer it is not
writing.

BTW, while reading it does stream.  Try making a very large tar tape,
and then scan the tape with "tar -tvf /dev/rct0" (or whatever your tape
device is).  It will read the tape continously.

JB


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